William O. Douglas

“ Indeed, the modernization plan was the heart of that agreement, and the subsequent assessment plan merely implemented the employers' duty under the collective bargaining agreement to establish a fund specifically marked to protect maritime workers against the far-reaching effects of modernization. ”

“ Frustration of the collective bargaining process comes not so much from the possibility that one or more provisions in a collective bargaining pact might be found illegal at some future date under the antitrust laws, or other statutes such as §§ 16 and 17 of the Shipping Act, but rather from the undue and possibly lengthy freezing or stultification of solutions to troublesome labor problems while an intimate part of the proposed agreement is sent to the FMC for approval. ”

“ The PMA members do care how they will be assessed $27,500,000 for a fund dedicated to the benefit of their employees. The Mech Fund was the key provision in the agreement, and without it there may well have been no agreement at all. The parties should not be expected to wait to settle their differences while the FMC decides under § 15 whether the employers' funding plan is in the public interest. Speedy resolution of labor disputes by collective bargaining has been the consistent federal policy. ”

“ Because the shipping industry is vitally important both to our national commerce and national defense, the Federal Government has maintained a special interest in trying to promote its growth and stability. ”

“ In return, the union wanted it workers to share in the cost savings resulting from modernization, and desired assurances that changes in work methods would neither create unsafe working conditions nor accelerate the productivity required of individual workers. After two years of preliminary negotiations, an agreement was made in August 1959 which provided for a further study of the problems of mechanization and for the establishment by PMA of a fund of $1,500,000 for the benefit of union workers. ”

“ With all respect, the Court's approach in requiring the funding plan to be submitted to the FMC for approval under § 15 of the Shipping Act will frustrate legitimate and speedy collective bargaining in the maritime industry. Neither the Court nor my Brother HARLAN is able to refer to any legislative history which indicates that Congress considered the Shipping Act to require the filing of labor agreements or provisions of those agreements under § 15. ”

“ Yet, the Commission held that the difference in treatment was not unreasonable because although automobile cargo may not have benefited as much as other cargo, it did receive 'substantial benefits' from the mechanization agreement. As the Court holds, however, such a standard, which focuses on only the benefits received, represents too narrow a view of § 17. What petitioner is contesting essentially is PMA's decision to adopt as the revenue ton for automobiles not a weight ton (2,000 pounds) but a measurement ton expressed in volumetric terms (40 cubic feet/ton) . ”

“ And with stronger unions, collective bargaining became more widespread. But the explosive situation in the maritime industry was not solved by these general enactments, and Congress passed a series of laws to deal with the labor problems in that industry. First was the Merchant Marine Act, 1936, 49 Stat. 1985, creating a United States Maritime Commission to investigate conditions of seamen on ships and to determine minimum wage scales and working conditions on vessels that were receiving government subsidies. Despite the 1936 Act, labor relations did not improve significantly ”

“ When the Auto Workers were recently negotiating with General Motors for a guaranteed annual wage, what would have been the consequence if nothing could have been decided until a federal agency had determined whether the impact on prices or on the economy was proper? ”

“ If business is bad, the workers are without work and without pay. With respect to longshoremen on the Pacific Coast, hiring is done through hiring halls operated jointly by the union and management. Employers can obtain longshoremen only through these halls, and only for specific jobs. No longshoreman may be employed steadily by any one employer; rather, each is dispatched to an employer as part of a gang to perform a specific loading or unloading job. See Kossoris, Working Rules in West Coast Longshoring, 84 Monthly Labor Rev. ”

“ As one commentator put it:
'The ILWU (then a part of the AFL International Longshoremen's Association) gained formal employer recognition as a result of the general strike of 1934, which followed years of exploitation and abuse of longshoremen by their employers. The bitterness which had characterized the industry carried over into the subsequent employer-union relationship. ”

“ The collective bargaining agreement involved in this case, with its Mechanization and Modernization Fund (Mech Fund) , cannot be evaluated properly without an understanding or maritime labor relations and technological developments in the shipping industry.
The history of maritime labor relations in this country has been punctuated with lengthy major strikes and continuous minor disruptions. [3] The maritime industry has long been faced with problems of instability-economic and managerial. Employment for maritime workers is generally both irregular and insecure. ”

“ In recommending the tonnage formula, the Committee noted that the same system was used for assessing a part of PMA dues. It had also been the practice of PMA to use a tonnage formula for assessments allocating other types of labor costs, such as joint maintenance of dispatch halls and the payment of arbitrators' salaries. [23] In fact, it appears that the ILWU had itself proposed a tonnage formula during the negotiations and asked that it be incorporated into the collective bargaining agreement ”

“ Since the average Volkswagen weighs only 1,800 pounds, but measures about 8.7 tons on a volume basis, it is being assessed $2.35 compared with the $0.25 it would otherwise have to pay on the basis of a weight-ton measurement. It is argued that this exaction is grossly disproportionate in light of the limited benefits which petitioner could expect to receive from the mechanization agreement as compared with those which other shippers could antici-
pate. ”